WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ARGENTINA 1950
The idea of this World Championship came from the mind of William R. Jones. This extraordinary man had been born in Rome but was a British national, he had been a student of the remarkable Dr. James Naismith( the inventor of basketball) in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1932 William Jones created the International Amateur Basketball Federation( FIBA). The first achievement of FIBA was the organization of the first European Championship. It was held in the Swiss city of Geneva, a year before in the Berlin Olympics basketball was described as the greatest sport in the world.
In the FIBA congress, during the 1948 London Olympic Games, the General secretary, William Jones, thought of expanding the idea with the celebration of World Championships. As a diplomat( he was a high-ranking official in UNESCO) he proposed Argentina as the first host country for the championship.
There were three reasons why Jones preferred this South American country to hold the greatest basketball event of the time. The first was that, in the post-war period, none of the European countries was in conditions to face up to the economic and human effort required to successfully host the event, and the USA was not interested as they were just starting their own professional league( the first NBA took place in 1946 albeit under a different name), their university league was fully established and they felt that it was enough to attend the Olympic Games. Secondly, Argentina was one of the founder members of FIBA, they had a good team and had the advantage of having been neutral during WWII. Thirdly, the Argentine president, Juan Domingo Peron, wanted to hold the event in order to overshadow the celebration of the football World Cup to be held in Brazil the same year.
The centenary of the death of General Martin, a legendary character in the history of Latin American independence and one of the founders of the Argentinean nation was the pretext for the candidature. President Peron had altered his political stance from fascism to a populism based on a union controlled working class after a three year stay in Mussolini ' s Italy( 1939-41) as Argentine military attaché. However he maintained his authoritarian standpoint. He was President from 1946 to 1955 when he was overthrown by a military coup and enjoyed immense popularity, in addition his country was going through an economic boom. Argentina was the perfect venue for the event.
POOR PARTICIPATION
Everything was ready for the first World Championship which was to begin on 22 October and end on November 3. The competition counted on entries from ten countries; however, due to economic and political problems prior to the event, the list of participants was changed twice.
The ten participants were selected at the FIBA Congress in London: the host country, the top three in the Olympics( USA, France and Brazil), the reigning European champions( strangely enough this was Egypt, winners of a very poor edition played in Cairo), the top two countries in the European classification tournament held in Nice in January 1950( Italy and Spain), the top two in the South American Championship apart from Brazil and Argentina( Chile and Uruguay), and finally the organization kept a wildcard entry which was given to Ecuador.
172 FUNDACIÓN PEDRO FERRÁNDIZ